Thursday, 23 January 2014

One of our students preached a thought-provoking three minute sermon in Ridley Hall this morning, and I'm grateful that she's allowed us to publish it.

Matthew
25:1-13

She says, s

ome
years ago my friend’s father was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.
One morning she came downstairs and found her dad, on all fours behind one of
the arm chairs. Jane said “ Dad are you all right, what are you doing down
there?” He
was going around the house checking all the fuses in the plugs! 2 days later
he died.

This
story has stayed with me - this gracious man not just getting ready for his own
death, but preparing others for a time when he would no longer be with them!

Just
after New year my next door neighbour Mike died suddenly overnight. He was 64
and although he suffered with emphysema, It was still a shock. Mike
was alone and it struck me not only how unprepared I was for his death, but
left me wondering ‘how prepared was he’? As
Matthew tells us “ Keep awake therefore for you know neither the day nor the
hour.”

Earlier
in Matthew's gospel Jesus calls us to be salt and light in the world. As
I thought about my relationship with Mike, I wondered how well had I reflected
that light, what kind of picture had I presented of the Kingdom of Heaven? Had
my lamp been spiritually full of oil, lighting up the path so that he could see
the way? In
theological College we spend a lot of time focusing on our own journey: it’s
easy to be forgetful and leave behind what really matters.

We
can find ourselves turning our backs, heading off in the opposite direction and
when we return, have missed the opportunity. Are
we the foolish bridesmaids, whose lamps are going out. Do we present a dim
view of the Kingdom, or do our words and actions ‘shut the door’ to others, long
before our lamps go out ?

Or
are we the wise bridesmaids? Do we carry “spare flasks of oil”, the spiritual
resources to trim our lamps? The
willingness, to love, serve and nurture. The openness to share Christ’s amazing
Grace, preparing all people so that they are ready to meet him and go with
him to share in the wedding feast !

The first Christians, in the light of the Easter events, shared their
stories with one another. And as they did so, they looked back into their
scriptures to try and make sense of this new narrative of Jesus’ death and
resurrection. As they looked into what we now call the Old Testament, key texts
emerged for them, and they began to develop themes and chains of texts.

For these early disciples, the whole of Isaiah was rich pickings. One
of the dominant texts, inevitably, was that of darkness, light, and the Servant
Messiah, and it’s this that is the theme of this blog.

DARKNESS: Throughout the book, darkness and the associated theme of blindness
speak of

sin and injustice, corporate, individual, committed against the people
of God, committed by the people of God. Ah,
you who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for
darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! [Isaiah 5.20]

rebellion: And he said, ‘Go and
say to this people: “Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but
do not understand.” Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and
shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with
their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed.’ [Isaiah 6.9-10]

judgment, separation, exile and chaos. Those who consult the dead
rather than the living - They will pass
through the land, greatly distressed and hungry; when they are hungry, they
will be enraged and will curse their king and their gods. They will turn their
faces upwards, or they will look to the earth, but will see only distress and
darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be thrust into thick darkness. [Isaiah 8.21f] Similarly in 13.10 on the Day of the Lord, the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light. Everything
is out of joint - The time is out of
joint; O cursed spite, says Hamlet, That
ever I was born to set it right!

By the time we get to Isaiah 59.9-15, we are rapidly approaching the answer to the challenge and conundrum of darkness. In 59 we are shown the sheer human
impossibility [picked up by Shakespeare in the tragedy of Hamlet] of setting it
right by ourselves. The best we can do, even after the restoration from exile
is that

we grope like the blind
along a wall

like doves we moan
mournfully

we wait for justice but
there is none, for salvation, but it is far from us…

LIGHT: And so we turn, with the prophet, to the coming light. Having
established that the human way forward is a dead end, chs. 60-62 take us to the
sovereign solution of a redeeming God, expanding on the phrase his own arm brought him victory of
59.16:

God will save his people; he will give light to them: the light of his
glory, the glory that Moses asked to see in Exodus 33, the glory of which the
seraphs sang in Isaiah’s own vision, the light of his presence, of his
self-disclosure. Yoursun shall no more go down, or your moon
withdraw itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of
mourning shall be ended. 60.20

But even more extraordinary than the glorious presence of a sovereign
God is the fact that this glory spills over. He will share his glory with them.
Isaiah is able to say that Zion will be radiant – in the reflected glory [60.5]
and, wonderfully in v.7, God says I will
glorify my glorious house!

THE SOURCE OF LIGHT: Light's only source is the Servant-Messiah: And this is what holds it all together for the
first Christians: the one who self-identified as Servant is the
Light-bringer, as Anointed one – Messiah – through whom the darkness will be
dispelled, the glory of God made present, and this glory reflected in and
through us: All of us, with unveiled
faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being
transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this
comes from the Lord, the Spirit. [2 Corinthians 3]

RESPONSES

Three of the gospel writers give us hints as to how the church
will respond to the abiding presence of his Epiphany. For Matthew it is overwhelming joy, and abandoned, or self-abandoning worship and homage. For Luke it shown by the shepherds’ glorifying and praising of God, Mary’s treasuring of these words in her heart, and Simeon’s I have seen it all now but
also his prophetic insight into the battle royal between the light and darkness
that is still to come.

John in his gospel gives us the response of a measured, thoughtful philosophizing song that from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. And for us?

Well for us, whether in the season of Epiphany or at any other time, it must surely be:

Unrestrained celebration – dance it like Miriam…

Submissive prostration – honour and adore him like the woman in Simon
the Pharisee’s house…

Unfettered proclamation – shout it like blind Bartimaeus, or the man
born blind in John 9…

And in the times when the darkness threatens to crowd in again, we are daily called to rehearse the great Epiphany truth that the
light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not…